Airline’s Safety Questioned Before Crash, Panel Told

Federal Aviation Administration inspectors raised safety concerns about Galaxy Airlines more than a year before a Galaxy plane crashed in Reno in January, killing 70 people, a congressional hearing was told Wednesday.

Officials from the FAA’s Miami office told a House investigative panel that maintenance and operation records at Galaxy were poor and the airline was under special surveillance after one particularly critical report by an FAA inspector who flew with a Galaxy crew in November, 1983.

But the inspectors said no incident was sufficient to warrant grounding Galaxy Airlines.

The airline’s only passenger-carrying plane, a Lockheed Electra, crashed moments after taking off from Reno on Jan. 21, killing all but one of the 71 people aboard.

Galaxy’s problems with FAA inspectors surfaced less than three months after the airline’s owner, Phillip Sheridan, received an operating certificate from the FAA and the Civil Aeronautics Board, according to testimony and FAA documents.

In November, 1983, FAA inspector C. David Hobgood wrote a report after a Galaxy aircraft he was monitoring flew into an area of severe storms without its radar working properly and with no updated weather forecast.

Hobgood called the maintenance logs aboard the Galaxy aircraft--the same plane that crashed in Reno--”nothing more than a joke” and questioned the “integrity and intentions” of Sheridan, who was on board at the time of the flight.